Runaway Duology Part 2: Reckoning
by Jade-Max
Summary: Sequel to Runaway. A certain Young Jedi's past is revealed... and it's not what they've been telling everyone.
1. Introduction

May 2006

Disclaimer: Star Wars is property of George Lucas.

Title: Reckoning

Author: JadeMax

Timeframe: Post Thrawn Trilogy, YJK AU - sequel to "**Runaway**"

Character: The Runaway ;)

Keywords: Angst, short story.

Summary: Some people will go to extraordinary lengths to hide their past - even when it catches up with them.

Notes: You may want to read Runaway before you read this or it may not make sense (Both are short)

**Reckoning**

_Introduction_

I don't know why I thought I'd gotten away free and clear. Maybe it was because the next years of my life were so chaotically wonderful.

The spacer that took me in never pressed about my past. I think he believed me when I told him I lost my family in a mud slide on the unstable planet. Hell, I believed myself. I'd lost my brother, my mother and my father - adopted though I might have been - the morning that mud entombed them alive.

I remember the spacer making a point of letting me know when their bodies had been recovered. I cried for days, unable to believe they were gone. And yet, a part of me believed that my past was just that. Past. Gone. I only cried that one last time and then I locked it away, burying the pain inside.

I knew I was doing it, but I couldn't help it. I'd learned, well before meeting them, that I couldn't show weakness. My biological parents had taught me that. Showing weakness was a good way to be preyed upon, a good way to be taken advantage of.

I was taken to Coruscant, and while the spacer didn't have much, he shared what he did have.

I admit I really didn't trust him. Not at first. He was nice, fair, but I kept expecting to feel the back of his hand. I was insolent, wild and I disliked authority. Who can blame me when I came from the background I did?

He didn't. The spacer never lost faith in me. When I stole, he didn't hit me. He simply made me own up to it, do the time or paid my fines and made me have to pay him back. He taught me to take responsibility for my actions. He encouraged me to be better than I was, to have a sense of self worth.

Ok, so I didn't have _much_ of a sense of self-worth, but it was better than what I started with.

I learned to put my scrounging skills to good use and found that the under levels of Coruscant were packed with a myriad of old _things_ that people had discarded. Some of them were worth quite a bit; if you had the skills to get to them.

And I did. I was very agile, something that would serve me well in later years, and I was able to locate and remove things that others simply had no way of getting to.

I didn't know, at the time anyway, why I was able to do these things that other children couldn't. I didn't understand why I seemed to have all the luck. I was always faster, more cunning; I was usually on the upper hand.

Later, after meeting friends who would change the direction of my life yet again, I would find out I was Force Sensitive.

These friends were children of an influential family that I had heard much about on my journey to Coruscant and in my time as a vent crawler. Their parents were war heroes, credited with helping bring down the Empire and restoring peace and unity to the galaxy. Their parents were credited with helping thwart Grand Admiral Thrawn.

These friends were the Solo twins.

The Solos were different from any other children I had met in the under city. They were privileged, well fed, generous. They were naive of the ways of crooks and swindlers. They had no knowledge about the dangers of the city.

I'd encountered them, quite by chance, stumbling around looking for a part that "Jaya" needed for rewiring something. They were only nine at the time. Impetuous and head strong.

Jaina was obviously the leader. After that first night when I led them back home, narrowly avoiding two separate gangs and two sets of patrols, we spent many days together. Jacen loved his animals, something I never really understood. Animals are for eating; they're very tasty. The skins usually fetch a good price too, if you know who to take them to.

But I guess everyone has to have a hobby.

I was with the twins almost daily until the year they began attending some Jedi college with their Uncle. I admit I was jealous. I was also more than a little hurt that they could just up and leave me with a simple "see you next month".

I was sixteen by the time the twins began attending their college, and I freely admit to having had a major crush on Jaina. A crush, that when we were separated, never really dwindled. In fact, the more I look back, the more I realize that what I felt was probably the first stirrings of love.

Having come from where I had, I don't think I ever would have been able to recognize it until now. For me it was simply that she was the most beautifully talented and considerate person I'd ever met. She was my hero and I wanted to make her proud of me.

It was in the times that they returned to see me that I realized exactly how important one person could become to someone else. I cherished her smiles, her laughter. I cherished my time with her and I tried to impress her in my own way.

I knew I'd never be able to do it on her terms, so I did it on mine. I found the most outrageous and dangerous finds in the under city and then proudly showed them off as if I'd put them there for her pleasure.

They left me again. And it was in this time that I was taken by the Shadow Academy and was told that I had the abilities that I was so envious of in them. I was told I had the potential to become a great Force User.

A Sith.

I suppose with all my issues, it would have been bound to happen eventually, but the academy gave me a channel for my rage. It gave me an outlet to express the deepest, darkest parts of my soul that had been hidden for years.

It gave me the chance for revenge.

Only, I took that revenge out on the people, _the person,_ I cared about most. I've been ashamed ever since and I often wonder why Jaina still hangs around me.

Peckhum, the spacer that took me in, once told me that she does it because she believes in me. How can she believe in me when I don't even believe in myself?

Maybe it's a girl thing.

I can't help but wonder. When I tell her the truth about my past, the truth that I'm not who she thinks I am, but a runaway who didn't have the courage to face down his own father, what will she say? Will she still have the open compassion and acceptance that's so characteristic of her?

Or will her compassion turn to disgust? Will I, yet again, lose everything that has become important in my life?

You'll notice I said when, not if. Because I know now that if I truly care for Jaina, even if I don't really understand why, she deserves to know the truth about me.

She deserves to know that I'm not an orphan. I'm not from Ennth. That my real name isn't Zekk.


	2. Chapter 1

_Chapter 1_

I suppose I should have expected something when Master Skywalker sent for me after I returned from my first Bounty Hunter missions. I wasn't technically his student, but he still looked out for me.

He told me he had a mission of a very delicate nature that would need my skills and that, if I was willing, I would be paired up with Jaina to go under cover.

Apparently we needed to infiltrate some fancy to-do. Jaina would be the one doing the infiltrating; I would be the one sneaking into the fourth storey room to retrieve the information and release the political prisoner they were flouting as dead. I was to help the prisoner escape to the ground and then become a distraction. I wasn't to harm anyone, that was made very clear, but the Jedi needed to set the world straight.

The world of Corriban.

I wasn't sure why the name rung a bell in my head, but it did. Alarm bells. Loud ones, that told me with every instinct I shouldn't go. When I analyzed them, with Master Skywalker waiting for my reply, I didn't know why the name would alarm me. I should have guessed, but I didn't. Instead I ignored every instinct that told me to refuse and I agreed to go.

Jaina, now sixteen and blossoming into a wonderful young lady, was my closest friend, and my secret love. I knew that was why I wasn't able to destroy her, but if I had my way she'd never know my feelings. I wasn't worthy of her, I wasn't in her league and I firmly believed she could do much better than the street rat who'd been lying to her from day one.

We landed on Corriban without event, having taken my ship, the very ship that Peckhum had found me stored away on, and quickly disappeared into the loosely populated streets.

I felt an eerie sense of foreboding the moment we landed on the planet. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, chill-bumps appearing on my skin the moment I stepped off my ship. I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach I couldn't really identify.

I didn't understand it. Not at first, anyway. I'd never been on this planet, to my knowledge, so I couldn't even grasp why it was making me nervous. As we walked the streets, pretending to be tourists, I noticed people staring at me oddly. Not a good thing when you're trying to be inconspicuous.

Jaina pointed out several shops she wanted to check. The hardware, the tools and a café.

I'd frozen, images flashing in my mind. I knew this place. Sweat had broken out all over my skin as everything suddenly made sense. I knew this place because this was where I'd been born. That café was the same one my father had allowed us as a "treat". A cold shiver had slid down my spine.

This was where I'd made the decision to begin running.


	3. Chapter 2

_Chapter 2_

"Zekk!"

He looked up startled, almost dropping his datapad. "Yeah?"

The voice through his door was muffled, but unmistakably Jaina's. "Can we talk yet?"

He looked down at the datapad in his hands. She didn't understand. No one ever understood. He sighed, putting the datapad down and pushing to his feet. He reached up to tie back the long hair that hung around his face before taking a glance of himself in the mirror.

He looked horrible.

They'd been on Corriban for the better part of two days, most of which he'd been huddled in his cabin for. Trying to make sense of what was happening, of why it was happening now. He'd been unable to explain his actions to her, to explain the horror she'd suddenly felt from him.

He'd been unable to explain why he'd deserted her in the middle of the street and run back to his ship as if his life depended on it.

Even if he hadn't been able to explain it to her, he now understood why he hadn't wanted to come to this planet. This planet was the key to unraveling the little white lie that had become his life; this planet and what it held had the power to destroy the life he'd painstakingly built for himself.

He rubbed one hand over his face, feeling the stubble along his jaw, the weariness in his features. He'd spent two days searching for balance, for the equilibrium that -

"Zekk?"

"I heard you, Jaina." His voice sounded weary, pained, even to his own ears. He strode to the door and unlocked it, staring down into concerned, liquid brown eyes.

"You look horrible."

He smiled weakly, but didn't invite her in. "I just need some sleep."

"Then what have you been doing for two days?"

He wasn't about to tell her he'd been writing a diary about the last eleven years of his life. He wasn't about to admit to it just yet. "Thinking. Tomorrow's the function we came for, right?"

She nodded, watching him with worried eyes.

"I'll be ready." He closed the door in her face, unable to continue looking down into those eyes he was sure saw too much. He placed his forehead against the door, closing his eyes as he struggled with the sudden sense of being adrift.

He'd been Zekk for eleven years. Eleven long, hard fought years to define himself as something other than a child who couldn't stand up to his father. And he'd failed.

He'd failed to move beyond the pain, to deal with it. He'd failed to accept it as a part of him. He'd failed to find the inner peace required of the Jedi, the inner peace that would prevent his fall to the darkside.

He'd failed to stop running.


	4. Chapter 3

_Chapter 3_

Their mission went off without a hitch, for all of his lack of confidence and attention. Jaina was splendid, charming her way through it all in the fashion only the daughter of a rich family could. Though she wasn't graceful or inclined by nature, she knew how to use what charms she had to her advantage.

A part of him was jealous, but he was accepting as well. He couldn't very well object to her pretending to be something she wasn't. Their mission accomplished, they'd slipped away form the party, pretending to be two young lovers heading for the gardens.

It had been here, when they'd accomplished their goals, that his world had fallen apart.

"Aiden?"

The voice was familiar in its inflections and timber. He continued to move with Jaina, ignoring the incredulous summons, barely able to keep his knees from shaking as that voice sent fear and anger racing through his blood.

"Aiden, is it you?"

Jaina paused, turning to look back curiously. "I'm sorry, sir, but I believe you have mistaken me for someone else."

The man before them was a figure he would have recognized anywhere. It was the towering figure that still haunted his dreams; that had found him screaming in the nights as a child and left him waking with cold fury as an adult. His face was as charming, as easy-going as he remembered.

The mask that hid the monster inside.

The man chuckled charmingly, but didn't look at Jaina. "I meant your friend, little lady."

He didn't respond to the comment; she responded for him. "I'm afraid you've mistaken my friend Zekk for someone else, sir."

"As if I wouldn't recognize my own son!" The man's declaration was almost angry, though his posture remained civil.

"I'm not your son." His voice was soft when he finally found it, refuting the man calmly, far more calmly than he'd ever dared hope.

The man's eyes hardened. "You owe me, boy, for the grief your mother gave me when you disappeared."

"I'm not your son." His voice was firm now, refuting the conviction the older man was showing. "My family died, on Ennth, eleven years ago. I do not know you."

The man stepped towards him and Jaina jumped in front. "Hold it!"

The man didn't even pause, simply swept his hand down, taking her across the face in an almost casual movement as he advanced. "Just like my late wife. Shut up you mouthy twit!"

He didn't think. His so-called father had just struck the girl, the woman, who was his best friend; who meant everything to him. His lightsaber leapt into his hand, and ignited at the same time. The older man stopped, but he didn't stop himself.

He let out a cry of pure rage before lunging. "You will not harm her!" His father cried out in surprise as he was slammed into, the younger man pressing down upon him, the lightsaber blade at his throat. "I won't let you harm her. Not the way you hurt my mother, and not the way you hurt me."

"Zekk, no!" Jaina's dismayed cry was belated as she realized what had transpired as she hit the ground. "He's not worth it!"

His eyes - his mother's eyes - flashed emerald fire ass he stared down into the shocked face of the man who'd given him life. This man, this thing beneath him didn't deserve to live. "He is, Jaina. You don't know what he is."

"And you do?"

The fire in his eyes flared, the lightsaber moving slowly closer to the man's neck, though he had his hands had wrapped around the iron grip that were holding the hilt. The man was trying in vain to keep that weapon from inching closer to his flesh.

He nodded, unable to look at her. "I know him. This piece of filth helped give me life." He didn't need to see her to see that he'd shocked her into silence. He stared down into his father's eyes, perversely enjoying the fear he was causing, feeding on it, relishing in having turned the tables on him.

Jaina's hands curved around his arm. "He's not worth it, Zekk."

"How would you know?"

"Because this isn't right; this isn't you?"

He threw off her arm with a shrug of his shoulder. "You don't know me, Jaina."

"No?" She laughed. "Then who was it that I was with when the glow-fish incident happened? Who was it that came to my tenth birthday and gave me a hug as a present? Who was it that helped the little lady that lived next to him for years because she couldn't get out to help herself?" She spoke with conviction.

"It wasn't me." But the lightsaber had halted its decent, hovering in the air centimeters from the man's throat. "I'm not from Ennth, though I lived there for a short time. I ran away from this planet, from _him_." He almost spat on the man who lay helplessly beneath him. "I'm a coward, Jaina. I took the name of a dead boy on Ennth because I couldn't stomach being named after _this_."

Her hands curled around his shoulders, squeezing gently. "Let him go, Zekk."

"I'm not Zekk!" The words were tortured, pained as he shrugged her hands from his shoulders. But, as he stared down into the eyes of the man who had beaten him daily for most of his young life, something was turning inside him. Something he hadn't given much thought to. He was seeing everything he'd accomplished in the last eleven years. He was seeing his triumphs, seeing the friends he'd made. Seeing the qualities that Jaina had spoken about.

He was better than this, he realized. He was better because he'd grown up and away from his roots. He was better because he'd fought against the very things his life's first lessons had taught and become something against the odds.

He was better because he hadn't grown up to be like this man.

Slowly, almost reluctantly, he backed away, removing the lightsaber from the man's grip and shutting it off as he regained his feet. His father was slow to recover, and he was perversely pleased by it despite having come to his decision. He took a deep breath. "Let's go, Jaina."

"But, Aiden..."

Jaina glared at the man. "His name is Zekk."

The man protested, but Jaina took Zekk's arm and allowed him to lead her away. Neither looked back, though the man continued to make a ruckus.

Jaina finally paused by one of the parks several blocks from the party, and turned to face him, her eyes clouded with confusion. "What happened back there?"

He pulled his hand from hers, and turned away, looking up into the night sky. How could he explain? "I wasn't born Zekk, Jaina. I was born Aiden Kyle. That man was Dengus Kyle; my father."

"But... What about Ennth?"

He looked down at her, and smiled sadly. "I did live on Ennth; that much is true. I had an adopted family there; a brother named Zekk. When the mudslide happened, they were sleeping. None of them made it."

She stared at him.

He turned away, moving to sit on a nearby bench, leaning his elbows on his knees and letting his hands dangle between his legs. "It's been almost eleven years since I left this world. Since I escaped _him_."

She sat next to him, but didn't touch, feeling his need to be alone for the moment. Her voice was hushed. "What did he do to you?"

He stared down at his hands, the remembered pain of it all flooding back as a dull ache in his heart. She deserved to hear what had happened. Despite it, despite not knowing all the facts, she had stood by him. "He... beat me. Daily, repeatedly. Not just physically, but emotionally. Nothing I ever did, nothing I ever said, nothing I ever learned or wore, or wanted to do, was ever good enough. I've still got the scars..."

He stared down at his hands, flexing his fingers. "I realized one night when I was seven that he didn't care. He wanted people's respect, to have power over them. He beat me more than he beat my mother, though she did try to protect me. The last night I was here, he put my mother in the medical ward for getting in the way when he was trying to get a point across to me. I knew he would kill me if I stayed. So I left."

"But you were only seven!" Her tone was horrified.

His eyes glazed as he spoke, remembering the hardships of those first days; he didn't react to her comment, hadn't really heard it anyway. "I had to learn fast how to survive on the streets. I stowed away on a freighter here that took me to a world that was in almost perpetual winter. I spent weeks, maybe months, on that world just learning how to survive. I almost didn't. Eventually, another supply freighter arrived and I stowed aboard. That was how I landed on Ennth. I met Zekk, the real Zekk, in a game some of the kids were playing. He looked like me, only his hair really was black and he had blue eyes, not green. We became fast friends, pretending to be twins separated at birth."

He blew out a long breath. "His family unofficially adopted me when I told them I was an orphan. They died right before I turned eight."

"Oh, Zekk..."

He lifted his head. "You know the rest."

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, hugging him tightly, her cheek against the curve of his neck. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I was going to." He reached up to wrap his hands around the arm close to his neck. Not to push her away, but to feel closer to her. "I'm ashamed of what I was, Jaina. I ran away leaving my mother to face that monster alone."

"You were only a boy, Zekk. A child."

"Don't you mean Aiden?"

"No way." She shook her head adamantly. "You're still Zekk. You're my friend, no matter what your past. I only wish you'd told me sooner so I could help!"

He lay his head against hers, closing his eyes and basking in her acceptance. "Zekk I was, and Zekk I remain." He whispered the words softly. "Thank you, Jaina."

They left the park together, and Jaina swore she wouldn't reveal his secret. It was his secret to tell, his story. As far as she was concerned, he really was Zekk.

And so he was Zekk, the orphan from Ennth, again. And that way he'd remain. Whatever was on Corriban, whatever hold it had once held over him, was slowly disappearing. He had friends and a life to return to. He had hope and a future. He smiled as they boarded his ship. No matter what the past held, the future held more promise.

And he would eventually be alright.

Fin


End file.
